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I thought of them as an early form of face hugger that entered through the mouth but didn't have anything to implant. To me, it suggested the black goo made its contacts aggressive since they appeared to be worm like creatures just crawling around.

Perhaps an Engineer is in cryo on the ship?

Have we not had a Hammerpedes Explained Topic ;)

Nice to recap with some new information... first i will address your points on the Hammerpedes.

1) It doesn't contribute to the Alien life cycle.

I agree as far as it does not mention or show anything to its own Life Cycle... but it does show us the Black Goo can mutate Life Forms to become Xeno Hybrids... so it highlights a Black Goo/Xeno Connection... but indeed it does not show nothing of any life Cycle of the Hammerpedes.... but as i have covered before... they are Xeno DNA infected worms (hate to use Xeno DNA because they may not be Xeno but the Xeno and Black Go share Genetic Ancestry).

Worms (Earth) re-produce  Asexually, they are Hermaphrodites and it requires TWO WORMS to Mate and then both Worms will then have Fertilized their Eggs.

Worms are Egg laying Organisms... and Eggs grow in a sack much like the Queen in Aliens Egg laying Sack.

2) It mutilates the minor roles with no explanation.

It seems to react indeed on instinct, but we do see it go down into Milburns Mouth and we have to ask why? And then it departs the Mouth latter......

We can only assume... could it have mated with the other Hammerpede and then laid a Egg in Milburns mouth? But its only a logical way of explaining it... the movie did not show us enough and kept ambiguous... (My re-write was to have them bring back Milburns Body and not be allowed to bring it on board and then David either scans it, or places his hands on the chest and can sense something... then Janek Torches it.)

A less ambigious tease to push that maybe something was laid inside...

3) It's never spoken about afterwards.

Totally and who knows what they could have done with it....

My Prometheus 2 draft would have touched upon them and the potential for them laying Eggs.... in Hosts....

Will they do so in the next movie?

The Source hints that the Deacon has a lot of evolving to become a Xeno and so evolutionary its not as advanced... they also teased that the events of LV-223 and LV-426 concerning the Hammerpedes could be connected.

Nice to think that information is similar to my thoughts....

I will touch up on it again but i am sure if have before... but maybe Hammerpedes are responsible for the Chest Busted Engineers on the Juggernaught?

@dk

Interesting! The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that an Engineer was with them all along.

@BigDave

Hahaha, yes we have had a Hammerpede discussion before ;)

Excellent points you raise, particularly with the reproduction of the worms (hence the presence of two in the film)! Incredible how they actually might be responsible for ALIEN's crashed Derelict. 

But do they actually still exist throughout the franchise????

Maybe we haven't looked close enough ;)

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By the way, what exactly is that re-write of PROMETHEUS you created? It sounds wondrously fascinating! Could you post some of it on Scified?

I loved the Hammerpedes, terrifying little buggers. I like the reference to Earth worm mating practices Big Dave, that certainly makes a lot of sense.

However, if you are correct that means LV-223 will be littered with Hammerpedes and one giant Deacon Alien for whenever some unlucky soul travels there again... oh man.

SPOILER ALERT

AC ends up with the facehugger not even creating a real xeno. Archer births another neo, David and Walter kill each other, Daniels and Tennessee head back to LV223 to meet Shaw who had taped a note on David's back that reads "I went back to LV223". On the other side of the note is a star map. 

On returning to LV223 Daniels and Tennessee find the Deacons body. They see something in it's mouth and it is in fact a hammerpede. It jumps out and squirms away. They go into the engineer temple to look for Shaw where they find another note which reads "I'm heading to LV878". Another star map is drawn on the wall.

Daniel's and Tennessee leave the temple and on the way back to the ship they notice the Deacon's body is in a different position and there is now a hole in it's chest. They get back on the ship and begin the journey to LV878.

The last scene we're shown is two passengers having some fun in the shower. This is the scene from the trailer. The xeno appears (thanks hammerpedes) and slaughters the man. We see the girl covered in blood screaming, then the screen goes black and the credits roll.

?

I found the hammerpede sequence to be very insightful. It tells us that the hammerpedes have acid for blood and the effect it has on the space helmets. This is a nice link to the original facehugging scene with Kane imo. I felt that this suggested some kind of pre-cursor/cross reference, call it what you will, to the development of a facehugger.

"AC ends up with the facehugger not even creating a real xeno"

At first i thought Oh boy as the REAL LEAK LOL keeps getting more details and changes lol as they maybe remember more...

Then i carried on reading and notice its a joke... LOL love it.. Sticky Pads can come in handy... and i guess The Engineers have some lying around that David takes to his Lab/workshop with his Pen and Paper too LOL

"But do they actually still exist throughout the franchise"

The Hammerpedes....?

*They Existed in the late December 2093..... 

*They maybe never came from the Prometheus ship and so came from outside or even inside the Caves.

*So the potential is there if you have Worms + Black Goo you have Hammerpedes..

So yes they could have been there before.. thousands of years ago.. and even thousands of years after Prometheus.

I think i put this on a Space Jockey thread? as i was going to do my own but we already had a few....  that would be LV-426 and what happened.

And i think the Worms that become Hammerpedes could indeed had been the Answer all Along...

I think they could be changing that now..

def agree batchpool. I think the hammerpede has a direct connection to the facehugger due to all the similarities, the acid burning into the suit and the hammerpede entering the mouth and I don't believe they would be in the movie at all if they were not to serve some plot role. but the more I think about it the more Id say if this is true then one of the hammerpedes has to stow away on the ship shaw and david leave the planet in. maybe its a next stage hammerpede and lays eggs in an engineer who is in stasis????

ali81

When I initially saw the hammerpede enter Milburn it was on a tv-spot preview Fox was having my company test on theater patrons before the film came out. I remember thinking "that thing must be connected to the facehugger. Maybe it's where facehuggers come from."

However, when I saw the film itself I was left more with the impression that yes Ridley intended to remind the viewer of the facehuggers behavior, but in the same way the glass on Fifeld's helmet melting was intended to remind the viewer of Kane's incident. After the movie was over I walked away more with the impression that Ridley intended to deliver the idea to the viewer that the black goo simply imparts xeno qualities to whatever it infects. Furthermore I think he wanted us to see a similarity between hammerpedes and facehuggers so that when we were later introduced to the trilobite, we had some concepts to recall that would make the trilobite concept less confusing.

The hammerpede could just as easily entered Milburn with the purpose of devouring his organs. Worms are tunnelers and the hammerpedes were hyper aggressive worms. Maybe the hammerpede smelled some tasty lungs, a savory heart, and a delicious liver.

I think it's entirely possible Ridley will leave the hammerpedes behind as a unique ornament to Prometheus, and if he does, it will not detract from any of the other films at all for me (nor should it for anyone else). With that being said, I could definitely see the facehugger being created in a similar fashion to the hammerpedes, but perhaps instead of worms, spider eggs are exposed to black goo with perhaps a touch of human DNA (for the sake of explaining why facehuggers have a penis). To give due credit to the hammerpedes, their act in Prometheus opened the door conceptually for us to understand a concept such as black gooing spider eggs (or anything for that matter). They had an important role but it may have been their only role.